The good old "stream lined sales tax" approach. Absolutely nothing streamlined about it. David is correct. Our business isn't even retail and has to deal with this BS. It is fine for a huge company that has the ability to pay an entire accounting staff to deal with it but it criples small businesses.

In our business we deliver to customers within our state but out of our immediate area. We have to report the sales tax paid to each area where the parts are delivered to. The retarded part is that it isn't even perfectly aligned with zipcode but rather by zipcode plus 4. So now we have to fill out a seperate tax form for every different area we deliver(UPS or by our truck) parts to. So instead of one tax form we might have to fill out 10 or if we expanded enough 100+. Another thing this brings up is business licenses in individual towns. now these indivual cities/towns you deliver to can see who is paying the tax. Now they have the ability to see this and can try and require a business license because we are doing business in their city, since we deliver to them. One of the neighboring towns to our business wanted us to pay liek $500 for a business license when we do about $500 in total business a year and it is to their city shop. We had to tell them sorry but we jsut aren't going to sell to your city shop anymore.

This really, really hurts small businesses that don't have the means to pay a full time accounting crew.

Agreed. It's crazy how difficult it is to do taxes just for the WakeWorld gear I sell in California because of all the different county and city sales taxes. It's barely worth it as it is. If they expanded this to nationwide taxes, I can tell you without a doubt that we would no longer sell any products. You wouldn't even be able to buy a WakeWorld tee-shirt!! How lame is that.

This is just one piece of the reason why small businesses are struggling so much. Government needs to get out of the way if they want the economy to thrive. How can something so simple elude so many "brilliant" minds in government??

Government needs to get out of the way if they want the economy to thrive.

It is not going to happen, unless we get Obama out of office and then make lots of changes. Obama keeps bragging about how successful his GM bailout was. No mention of forcing many dealerships out of business through cronyism or going against bankruptcy common law and screwing the bond holders and favoring the unions. Now he is even publicly calling for the Federal Government to take over other industries.

This is Marxist socialism via facism... Cronysim or the Chicago Way is now the official way of this country, you know, where the government takes over/or controls all industry. The real problem is that people are just ignorant and lazy. We are building an entitlement society.

No way I see this passing. The backlash would be huge. Oh and by the way, be careful what you wish for - for years retailers have pushed Amazon to charge sales tax in states where they have distribution centers. They finally gave in and started charging sales tax in places like TX. Recently a story surfaced that Amazon is looking to strategically place warehouses with their most popular items in large metro areas (like Dallas / Ft. Worth) and begin offering same day delivery on those items. I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon already, but if I can get stuff delivered the same day - it'll cut even further into my purchases from local retailers.

Exactly - the pressure has been on from retailers and both Amazon/ebay (eBay's is already in beta) are rolling out local delivery services (in many cases, get what you want at your doorstep in one hour)...

I think you mean Ethernet (aka 802.3) was developed at Xerox PARC in the 70s. Has nothing to do with the Internet.

Yes, you are right and the Co-Founder of Intel is wrong. Then again, the internet was nothing until hundreds of thousands and then millions of individual users made it what it is today. The government didn't do that. In fact, "the internet" as we know it today, which is what you are debating with your Ethernet remark, didn't actually exist until NSFNET stepped aside which allowed commercial traffic to start. So either Xerox created the internet or the users did; in either argument, the government did not.

seems to me that I read in a book about T-Boone Pickens, That, AT&T, Ross Perot at EDS and some other key players were directly involved with the technology of data of phone lines.
I can't find the book or I'd list some of the other names. I must have loaned it out.....

From what I remember, the government pretty much got in the way at every turn.